"We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing." - Abraham Lincoln

Saturday, December 06, 2008

On Deception, Abortion, and Mischief

My attention was captured for a moment by this story in Fox News. Briefly, a 20-year old pro-life activist enters an abortion clinic in Indiana posing as a 13 year-old girl. Her story is that she has been impregnated by a 31 year-old man. The nurse attending her advises her to lie about the man's age, as Indiana law requires her to report all cases of statutory rape to the authorities. She also gives the girl information on abortion clinics in Illinois, where parental notification laws are not enforced.

It is noteworthy that only Fox News is carrying this story, based on a Google News search.

About four years ago a local paper had a story about a couple of girls from a local college who posed as a young pregnant couple and went to the crisis pregnancy center. There intention was to trap the volunteers there into proselytizing, which probably occurred. At the time , I remember thinking that it was something of a betrayal to present yourself under false pretenses. But somehow we justify these deceptions to achieve the means of exposing the heinous crimes of proselytizing, in one direction or another.

There was a time when I spent one morning a week praying outside of an abortion facility. During that time, I was witness to sundry impish activities surrounding the facility; on the part of abortion consumers, purveyors, and protestors. That is not to say that it was all of the same sort, or the same severity. I was surprised at the level of... well, there's really no other word for it than wickedness - the wickedness surrounding mostly the consumers and purveyors. There was the Satan worshipping attendant who obviously took a wry pleasure in his work; the doctor brought up on sexual harassment charges by an attending nurse; an angry mother herding her curly-locked young teenage daughter to get an abortion.

I remember once, when we were organizing a vigil at the facility, we went door to door in the neighborhood. No one came to the door. No one wanted to talk about it.

I've seen mischievous behavior on the part of protestors, as well. I've seen behavior by protestors that no balanced person would consider charitable. I've seen, or read about, aggressive proselytizing that steps way beyond appropriate bounds. But I've rarely seen a protestor get beyond the realm of impish, into actual maliciousness. This, of course, excludes the rare occasion of violence directed towards abortion purveyors. This shouldn't be ignored, but nor should it be portrayed as typical.

Unfortunately, misleading young (I mean young as in 13) women probably is typical. This is not the first time an abortion purveyor has been tricked into displaying their willingness to become accessory to statutory rape. Again, the means are supposedly justified by the end, which in this case is removing the injury of childbearing from the primary injury of the rape. A brief reflection will suffice to show that this does no justice to the girl.

The lie is that this can all just go away if the child is gone. People can forget, they can move on. But that isn't how real life works. That little girl (she is real) will go on being abused. The sacrifice is not effective; the pain continues.

We eventually had that vigil outside of the abortion facility. We were there, late in the night and early into the morning. My experience at the vigil reinforced all my earlier experiences, and both were vindicated by simple logic. This was an evil place, where women walk in with babies and walk out with none. This disappearance was perpetrated by people who, on some level, knew what they were doing. And no respectable people wanted to talk about it.

Well, another four thousand children died today. Probably more, since it is a Saturday. That's a real count: four thousand children per day. Four thousand children that no one wants to talk about. The count gets astronomical. If these are real lives, or if these are even partial lives, then what a cost - all perpetrated in the name of freedom. How free are we? How free will we be in the near future?

None could say it more eloquently than Blessed Mother Theresa: "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war." God doesn't forget: He is merciful and just. But He is not like us: He doesn't forget.